Slashdot Mirror
Senator Proposes Nonprofit Status For Newspapers
The AP is reporting that a senator has introduced legislation that would allow struggling newspapers to operate as nonprofits, similar to the way public broadcasting works. "[Sen. Benjamin] Cardin [D-Md.] introduced a bill that would allow newspapers to choose tax-exempt status. They would no longer be able to make political endorsements, but could report on all issues including political campaigns. Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax-exempt, and contributions to support coverage could be tax deductible. Cardin said in a statement that the bill is aimed at preserving local newspapers, not large newspaper conglomerates. ... The head of the newspaper industry's trade group called the bill a positive step."
the music industry cartel, then a decade later, the movie cartel?
A somewhat more balanced media is in everyone's interest.
Mandated not-for-profit media sources make for better reporting: discuss.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
So in the US, we have the 1st Amendment which says this: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; ..."
It seems to me that what this law would do is give a competitive advantage to those newspapers that avoid endorsing candidates.
Isn't that abridging the freedom of the presses that want to make political statements endorsing candidates? It basically says, "Don't make political endorsements, or else we'll tax you."
Would that make any capital gains on your shares in a newspaper tax exempt as well?
Or would any newspaper apply for non-profit status have to buy all their public shares and go private?
Either way, I don't think Murdoch would make his papers non-political.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Why not just make everything tax exempt? Then everyone would be more profitable, not just the failed buggy-whip companies.
Indivuduals should be equal in the eyes of the law. No special groups, no nonprofits. The "churches" already scam this all way too much.
If you want a low tax, go with this:
http://www.apttax.com/
Loophole are just avenues of abuse by which the well structured, well-to-do (read: corporations) with lawyers get away with paying less than their fair share.
The gov't should stay out of the business of the FREE PRESS. First Ammendment anyone?
Considering that when a local newspaper goes under a small part of the community is gone, I think this is a good idea. These small papers fill the niche market that are only in small communities have and help promote local issues that larger newspapers tend to gloss over. Losing the political endorsements would actually be a good thing since it might make the papers less biased. Providing both sides of an issue is much more informative than printing one sided articles because of the political leanings of the paper.
I think this is a really great idea. It forces them to be a little less biased, and it keeps well-written articles available. The natural beauty of print is that it's costly to publish, compared to digitally. This tends to force the writing to be polished, which online articles, blogs specifically, never achieve. There's just something nice about reading an article someone else has proofread before you. It's jarring to read blogs that have foregone this, as you tend to notice the little grammatical mistakes everywhere. Or worse, it's syntactically correct, but semantically rubbish.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
You mean we can look forward to having an entire week's worth of issues, once a quarter, be full of nothing but spots begging for donations? Yeah, that'll make subscription rates soar!
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
That's bullshit, if a news organization cannot survive in the market it doesn't deserve to exist. We don't need another NPR-style organization. News is not Sesame St. for adults. The papers are facing the 21st century with a 19th century technology, WHAT DID THEY THINK WAS GONNA HAPPEN? Meanwhile, New York Times still makes me laugh every time someone links to it and it asks for registration, BS, I close the window right there. Drudge is 21st century news, adapt or die.
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
Doing this for the big three would also save them. Money would be generated from taxes on selling things like gasoline and servicing these cars/trucks at dealerships.
I wonder for how long these companies can last given that for GM, which owned almost 75% of the market, has seen share dwindling to less then one-third. Sad indeed.
They've been replaced by newswebsites, just the same as the grass-eating horse was replaced by a gasoline-eating engine. There's no point to keeping around old, inefficient, and environmentally-damaging papers when the web can fulfill the same role.
In fact my local paper just started a website that looks identical to the old paper-based product, but with the advantage of (1) not killing trees (2) not burning millions of gallons for delivery trucks (3) early delivery at 2pm instead of waiting til 6pm, and (4) it can be archived onto your hard drive with minimal space.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Isn't that abridging the freedom of the presses that want to make political statements endorsing candidates? It basically says, "Don't make political endorsements, or else we'll tax you."
The same basic argument has already been made by churches many times. The answer by the Supreme Court has always been, "Endorse anyone you want, just don't expect the Federal government to subsidize it with a tax expenditure." Seems like a reasonable outcome to me.
Boom Shanka
The newspapers are not making money now, so having their advertising and subscription revenues tax exempt won't matter. The big difference would be they'd be able to get tax deductible donations.
Why do you think soliciting donations will make the media more balanced? As the mayor of Corruptville, I of course realize that we need balanced reporting in our fair town. I will even donate some of my embezzled funds towards that end - as long as the newspaper doesn't tell anybody about my embezzlement.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
The best part of Capitalism is letting bad business fail. If the newspapers can't fund themselves legitimately through voluntary commerce, like any other business, they need to fail, as they deserve.
With tax-exempt status, they exists solely at the mercy of government legislation. What are the chances they will criticize the government that grants them favored status?
This is a recipe for State control of news dissemination.
"Man is nothing without the works of man" -- Helvetius
but they surely will still have their respective slants on stories, which political cartoons they carry, and so on.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
If they are losing money, they are not being taxed anyway (even the federal tax code has limits).
Just between us, are you comfortable with a newspaper's independence if government officials and bureaucrats can threaten their tax-exempt status?
Couple this with the return of the fairness doctrine, and you have a recipe for an Orwellian experience.
I can't believe we allow endorsements at all! News should be non-biased, or clearly labeled otherwise.
The two primary costs of operating a newspaper are (a) paying the reporters, and (b) printing papers. We all know subscriptions are down and that the medium is evolving so that only the largest national papers can afford to print copies. Also, readership in local areas doesn't really demand printed copies as much as they want access to the information. For example, one thing local reporters cover is town council meetings and police reports. Thanks largely to digital search mechanisms, it's way easier to grab this information from the pages of a reputable townie news service website than to sift through a printed paper.
So, I see the costs of printing a newspaper disappearing over the years and that leaves only the cost of paying reporters. My question is... what's to stop the small newspapers from firing the majority of their staff and operating like Internet newspapers with self-moderated volunteer staffs? All it'd take is to deploy Slashcode, buy-in from town administrators and business owners, and a critical mass of town residents to begin operating a near-free town news service.
Meanwhile, I see "tradition newspapers" as an occupation disappearing, regardless of tax exempt status or not.
And look at it this way... the newspaper profit model has been largely based on ad-revenue for so long that a simple "local" implementation of Craigslist could easily facilitate job postings, garage sales, and local advertising so that tiny, tiny charges for these would pay the small staff that's needed to maintain the hardware and post the most interesting stories on the mainpage.
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's impossible for news to be unbiased. Even the process of choosing which stories are news entails a bias on the part of editorial, particularly if they opt to not give much coverage to a particular political issue or protest in favor of another.
The so-called "fourth estate" is still irrelevant.
You've *still* got media access tightly controlled in most government.
You've heard of National Public Radio right? They are non-profit get their content from the same sources, report it with about the same amount of complicity as any other news source.
Note, I am not laying all blame on newspapers. The consumer is happily paying for half-truths, advertising disguised as news, and 'man bites dog' stories.
This is another corporate welfare project.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Presumably the goal is to preserve newspapers as a necessary source of information gathering. The idea is that in the age of the internet, we face a free-rider problem and fundamental news gathering is less profitable. Ostensibly journalists are performing a public service.
But how well this proposed solution will address the real problem? There are lots of right-wing newspapers that are not profitable but they have dedicated corporate sponsors so they keep operating. Consider the Washington Times, or the Pittsburgh Tribune. If we let newspapers be non-profits we are giving a huge tax-break to Richard Mellon Scaife, and Rupert Murdoch, and Sun Myung Moon. All of the money these guy pump into their right-wing propaganda machines will be tax-deductible.
I want to save newspapers too, but this proposal will incentivize more propaganda than it will actual news.
Considering churches get non-profit, and even some HMOs as well, I would say that newspapers have much more of the public interest in mind than either of the other two. Churches and HMOs generally pay their top employes more than most newspapers; but yet where does the non-profit status currently go?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
You have to realize how desperate the newspaper industry has become. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer printed their last paper edition last week. They're just a web site now, and they distribute their news via Twitter. That's how far down they've come. The Detroit Free Press only prints on Thursday, Friday, and Sunday now. The San Francisco Chronicle may go next.
And those were once Great Metropolitan Dailies. Little papers go under every day.
Nothing is really replacing them. Blogs are mostly punditry; few have paid reporters. If anything, the future may be TV news presented via the Web. TV news has historically been time-limited, but that's not a Web problem.
. . . me, too!
Only old USENET hands and kibologists will get the, admitting lame, joke.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Currently, contributions to entities actively engaged in the political process are not tax exempt. Nor, should such contributions be tax exempt. However, newspapers, by their nature, are very often a loud voice for one political agenda or another within a community. It seems that it would be very easy to subvert the intentions of this proposal to provide tax-exempt cover for otherwise very blatant political activity. Sorry, but I don't trust politicians to police the political activities of newspapers -- particularly when politicians are directly benefiting from such activities.
I say leave things the way they are and let newspapers stand or fall on the basis as to whether people want to read what they print. Treating newspapers as charities is going in the wrong direction and opens up an opportunity that just begs to be abused.
And I propose that US lawmakers adopt "non profit" status as well!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This makes me immediately question what kind of "campaign funding" this senator has received.
What exactly is preventing the startup of community-based news websites? I already rely on one of those for the area I live in.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
If they mean 'local papers' the way I think, then I'd be happy to see them gone. I get three local papers, one of them twice a week, simply because they have the postal service stuff them in every single mailbox. They go straight into the recycle bin.
I tried reading a couple when I first started getting them (at the time it was just 2 once a week), and it was approx 4 pages of 'news' printed on 20-30 pages and filled with ads. Given their lack of actual reporting, a vast majority of their cost is printing and distribution. Those costs only go up since they're basically carpet bombing one of the fastest growing counties in the country.
End of line..
They won't be able to "endorse" a candidate.
But they'll still have an editorial page, where they'll call some candidates "great" and others "idiots".
The problem is, the online news services are all leaching off the traditional media for their content.
I'm actually looking forward with mild amusement to the panic when the flow of content from the big boys ceases.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
When the editors and such lean so hard to the left while the area they serve doesn't. A prime example is the AJC (Atlanta Journal and Constitution). They are so far the left they had to actually ask for a "conservative writer" for the editorial page. It was hilarious their reaction to known conservative writers they "refused to consider" . In other words they needed someone harmless and unknown. The AJC was practically the OJC during the last election. Yet go read pages which accept reader submissions and its clear the base doesn't lean at all the same way.
Now they are still bitching about loss of jobs and liberal professors are decrying the loss of jobs and "professionalism"; ready those dirty peasants with their blogs versus the glorious gods of journalism produced by said schools.
Bite me. Papers are getting what they deserved. Do not expect in an age where information is available from many sources that if you don't appeal to your possible customer base that you can remain viable. Either adapt to your customers or go the way of the dodo
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Even worse, it's state subsidized tax evasion.
If nonprofits have too much money at the end of the year, I guess they have to pay it out in bonuses and retro-active benefits to their executives, right? As long as their bottom line shows no profit, who cares what, for whom, their expenses were?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The bottom line is that cutting down trees and using nasty chemicals to make paper, making ink, using a crapload of energy to print the papers and then distribute them makes little sense when we are talking about distributing information.
The Internet, and other electronic forms of media, and readers like the kindel make so much more sense in terms of availability and timeliness of the information. This industry needs to shrink, just like candle making shrank when the electric light became popular.
Regarding neutrality, NPR is about as neutral as right wing AM radio, and a press regulated by the government should scare the hell out of you. Since they would be subject to all sorts of regulations to maintain their not-for-profit status, I for one would not believe anything they printed.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
It didn't take long for the followers of non-profit libertarian think tanks to chime in about how good it will be when those that can't earn a buck will finally die.
It's possible to be fair, but not to be unbiased; you have to have some kind of political viewpoint to decide what stories are even newsworthy.
I think our current media model is a post-WWII abberation, and we're headed back to an era of fragmented and obviously, blatently biased news sources. I'm leaning to the idea that is an improvement.
sounds like you found a niche. setup a blog and go to a city council meeting to see if anyone who attends regularly would like to contribute.
As you get older the order changes, but that's about it. I canceled my subscription to my local paper because they provide all that information for free on their website.
What?
The reason why the papers are failing is because they have not changed their business model. But RockymountainNews recently went under, and is now trying to make it as an on-line paper. They are still making horrible mistakes, BUT they are better than what they were.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If it wasn't for the local newspaper I wouldn't have a clue on what the city council does or what the school board is doing. The local news channels don't recognize small towns and all they report on is local crime and traffic reports.
In the post immediately before yours, I had said:
For example, one thing local reporters cover is town council meetings and police reports.
I think putting the information you get from local newspapers online is a lot easier than most newspaper operators realize.
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
Nonprofit isn't a single status. Certain nonprofits to which donations are tax-deductible for the donor have to avoid "substantial involvement" in politics, including explicit endorsements, to retain that particular status (Particularly, 501(c)(3) organizations, so called because their tax exemption is established in 26 U.S.C. sec. 501(c)(3)). When the group of people who make up a 501(c)(3) want to act collectively politically, they typically set up separate organizations which are also tax-exempt nonprofits, but to which donations are not tax-deductible for the donor, which can be substantially involved in politics.
Most tax-exempt nonprofits are not restricted in their political involvement at all. See, generally, 26 U.S.C. sec. 501 [excluding 501(c)(3)].
Furthermore, with regard to newspapers, any newspaper which chose to become a nonprofit (i.e., not to be operated for the benefit of private owners/shareholders) could do so now and become a 501(c)(3) now with the restrictions that would be imposed by this bill. So I don't see how this really provides any new options.
That is my first thought - what is preventing them from doing this right now?
There is noting that says you can't incorporate a "business" as a non-profit, or rather nothing prevents a non-profit from generating revenue. One of the major disadvantages is that since you don't have profit, it's hard to have investors, which makes getting capital for expansion harder.
So to me the most important question is what does this bill allow the newspaper companies to do that a normal non-profit couldn't and is that really a good idea? Of course the story completely neglected to include that information.
Why is it that every story I read, or news report I watch I leave thinking that journalists completely failed to investigate the heart of the story? They rarely even explain what the relevant details of the situation are, let alone think to ask any of the important questions (the ones I would ask :), instead just running whatever random quotes they could get from people.
If the newspaper wants to be a Not-For-Profit in the vein of Public TV or Public radio, the problem is that printing has a fixed per-issue cost. It is eaiser to broadcast some waves and hope that donors pick up tab on the the fixed cost. I can't see many newspapers able to survive if they charged a per-paper subscription cost because if they could have done that successfully, they wouldn't be in this position. Even if they could swing it, local papers would need to group together to effectively cover their costs and distribute the costs over a larger readership. Those presses/staff are a pretty fixed cost, the paper itself is next to nothing.
I'd conjecture they'd do the online thing which many are considering anyway, which would make it's cost-strucutre a lot more like the Public TV/Radio businesses. The problem would then be then how do you give tax-exempt status to news outlets who aren't doing much more different than bloggers. I would imagine everyone who blogs trying to get their ad-revenue and other income from their blog considered tax-free as a "small, public news outlet." Ideologically, it would blur the "artifical" lines between small local papers and local community websites or local news blogs, which is good. I've read some blogs better than the local paper, and sometimes even less biased. However, it would effectively give who can sign up for wordpress or blogger a huge tax shield they could route all kinds of costs such as their internet connection, as a a donation to the not-for-profit.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
Not every report needs to be a 10 page listing of everything going on.
For example, why are protesters relevant? You're clueless if you don't get the idea that they are presenting an opposing viewpoint, but why do we need to know every anti-Democrat opinion there? If you want a story on it, it should be a SEPARATE story (or even editoral) and thus shouldn't be a part of the general convention coverage article. Thus omission isn't bias, it's proper reporting.
By your argument, failing to report the tin-foil hat conspiracy version of stories is biased omission. But what is the cutoff? Presenting "both sides of the story" isn't the basis of unbiased reporting, it is the basis of turning editorials into reporting when it should be left to the opinion pages. I don't need to read the conservative counter to a Democrat's speech in an article about the speech. That counterspeech should be its own story or in the OP-ED.
We aren't talking about preserving news regurgitation from the Associate Press. We're talking about being able to find out when the Community Fare will be in town, when high school sports games are scheduled for, and the opinions of the individuals who are running for town council elections. Last time I checked, that type of stuff isn't covered by any of the internet news leeches who don't add any value to the stories they report. That's the type of thing you need a local news source for.
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
Why should my tax dollars support a failing business? I understand with banks, airlines, and in some respect the big 3 if they go under a lot of people and businesses are going to be hurting. However with a newspaper especially a local newspaper it is essentially a small business with around 500+ employees. The real question is why is the number of subscriptions down? Could it be that people find their news online from different sources (cnn.com, associated press, bbc, etc) rather then one local news paper? Why should the government prop up a failing business model? Did the government prop up the horse drawn carriage makers when the automobile started to take wind? It is not like people are loosing their news. The news is just going to a new medium, the internet. I do not feel it the job of the tax payer to prop up the newspapers.
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
At this point in time, there is still an advantage to using print that many people tend to neglect. Sure it's easier and more efficient to post to the web, where content can be dynamically generated and altered on the fly as updated statistics come in, but by allowing newspapers to die out you're severing awareness of the community for the people without access to the internet, in essence forcing a change to the new lifestyle. As the internet is a relatively new thing, it would behoove us to stick with something traditional for the space of a generation or so, rather than switching to the "latest and best toys". Internet access is still not freely available in the way a newspaper might be found on the street - one has to actually have a computer to access any information at all about your community. While access is becoming widespread, it's still another level of abstraction that makes it that much more difficult to reach for people who refuse to use computers, who can't afford computers (or access), or who don't know where in the enormity of the world-wide web to search for local information.
This is similar to the argument from yesterday that the American lifestyle and physical community is built around having a car; most of the time those people without a vehicle are shafted by not having access to reliable public transportation systems and not being in reach of the jobs or services they need. At present, news is accessible in both formats, and should *stay* that way for awhile longer, through whatever means possible. Not sure if tax-exempt status is the answer, but the notion of keeping it afloat awhile longer interest me.
There is simply no case which can be made for capitalism in the USA at all. The simple truth is that America hasn't been a capitalist economy for a long time.
Deleted
Blacksmiths will also enjoy tax-exempt status in an attempt to preserve the horseshoe manufacturing business. This is mean for the local smithy and not the large metal working conglomerates who already received a major cash bailout earlier this year.
... when a politician opens his mouth, and says something refreshingly un-stupid. This could allow these newspapers to continue in business, and MORE importantly, improve the quality of journalism by taking extreme political activism out of journalism. No endorsements, no problem. At least not for me. I prefer to make up my own mind when it comes to voting, thank you very much.
I wonder how they will define a newspaper. Will a web-only newspaper be tax-exempt? Will Slashdot be tax-exempt?
Being a non-profit corporation and being 501(c) tax exempt are two totally different things.
While there are some serious complication in changing a large, public for-profit corporation into a non-profit, they are simply a matter of time, effort and money. Getting tax-exempt status means you have to deal with the IRS. Unless Congress amends the tax law, it looks like newspapers could only fit under 501(c)(3) as a literary charity. That law specifically states: Section 501(c)(3) organizations are subject to limits or absolute prohibitions on engaging in political activities.
Unless the papers are willing to abide by that (and the EXTENSIVE restrictions listed after that in the law), Congress would need to make a special exemption.
Then you have "tax exempt" does not necessarily mean "tax deductible." A tax exempt organization is one that does not have to pay income taxes. Contributions made to certain tax exempt organizations may be deductible on the donor's federal income tax return. While the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) defines more than twenty different categories of tax exempt organizations, contributions to groups in only a few of these categories are tax deductible.[1]
So, to sum up, either Congress enacts a change to the tax code that makes special exception for newspapers -- aka a "buggy whip law" -- or the newspapers submit to self-castration.
Good luck with either happening anytime soon.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
David Swensen and Michael Schmidt proposed that newspapers simply receive endowments and operate off the interest, insulating them from commercial pressures and conflicts of interest. I think that's a fantastic idea, especially in conjunction with legal nonprofit status for newspapers.
I think you're absolutely right about the scale of the problem. But we need to evolve the profession, not subsidize a dying profit model. We need to create a market mechanism for journalists to get paid.
I can only speculate about what such a incentive system might look like. Perhaps like-minded blogs could band together and fund their own news agencies. Or maybe newspapers will follow Salon's online subscription model. Personally I would much prefer a new profit model if it meant news organizations got their revenue from subscribers rather than advertisers.
We are still in the middle of a technological revolution so nobody can predict what the solution is going to be, but I think it's likely that the market will find a solution for this issue.
Not necessarily, I know this is a foriegn concept to modern economics but they could always reinvest in the organization instead of increasing executive pay. You know, improve printing and graphical art equipment, or even spend money hiring and cultivating new journalists.
How about non-profit status for GM, Chrysler, and AIG?
I think the drop in print media is happening for the same reason President Obama had such a great run for office. Younger people are not buying print, they get their news online. Quicker and more flexible than print. Fox News is doing well because the majority of conservatives are older and find the print media to be left biased. Same with talk radio. Plus they can keep an eye out for kids on their lawn. It's interesting that the same people who catapulted a liberal into the highest office are causing the demise of their own ancestral pulpit because they no longer think of it as worthwhile.
Now we see the violence inherent in the system.
Even though the tax on transactions is small, people will find ways to avoid anything that's legally a transaction. Funds that pay monthly dividends would move to quarterly dividends, or even annual dividends, which makes life hard on fixed-income investors.
As another poster pointed out, cash transactions are a problem here. Either cash transactions would go up, increasing opportunities for robbery or cash transactions would have to be eliminated.
Trading in options might become more common than trading in shares, since one option contract controlls 100 shares at a much lower price. That would actually squeeze small investors who can't afford to deliver on say, one contract for GOOG.
I'm sure there are some other holes too. The way to experiment with it would be to put a fixed tax on options trades, and see how it impacts that market. Everybody hates derivatives traders now, so it'd be politicly feasible.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
You know, a company only pays taxes on the money they make. Businesses that are losing money don't pay taxes. (OK, this might shield them from property taxes on the buildings and equipment, depending on state and municipal laws). It's a nice gesture, but it will have absolutely no tangible effect.
Most newspapers don't need to make an explicit endorsement of a candidate. They just slant, suppress, or edit stories. Or choose 'letters to the Editor' that favor or oppose candidates, or plain make stuff up.
Don't get all righteous and claim it doesn't happen, ok? We're family here, and we know better.
So denying newspapers the opportunity to make explicit endorsements doesn't mean anything to me. NPR exerts as much influence as it possibly can within the bounds of non-profit status, and it is influential despite that limitation. I expect newspapers to continue that, though they may find their influence waning because of the marketplace, not because of corporate not for profit status.
I'm more interested in how other media will react. Some are still making money, and may be asking that this be canned, as the problem isn't that newspapers are unfairly failing because they are required to be profitable, but that they can't seem to compete with other media. Giving them a tax break doesn't seem like the right thing to do.
And I get a few newsletters from outfits that are 501(c)(3) nonprofits. Doesn't stop them delivering information. Why not just reorganize as a 501(c)(3) and move on. Oh, wait, there's the issues of becoming a 501(c)(3) and still acting like you're not. Darn. Stupid rules. Shouldn't apply to newspapers. They're special.
As my former boss said, we were not a 'not-for-profit' organization, though if we didn't pay attention, we would be a 'non-profit' one. The distinction was vitally important to himm but we weren't a newspaper. Just a bunch of guys trying to earn a profit.
We didn't think of asking for special tax status. We went out and competed.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
The problem is, the online news services are all leaching off the traditional media for their content.
I'm actually looking forward with mild amusement to the panic when the flow of content from the big boys ceases.
So am I, because then whoever is business-savvy will change their business model to reflect the changing times. here's a tip, the AP isn't going to die this way, because if every newspaper in the world went belly up tomorrow, half the governments on the planet would pay to keep them in business. This is because the value of the AP is internationally recognized, and anyone funding it gets the kind of good reputation Britain does for hosting the BBC. The same with Reuters, the same with Al Jazeera, not that AJ relies on print copy revenue of course...
Bullshit they would be able to do that. The line between reporting information and advocacy gets blurry. Sometimes the information has such inescapable conclusions, that there's just no line at all.
Did you watch Frontline this week? It slammed GWB's big spending pretty hard. Had that episode run before the 2004 election, you damn well know some people would be screaming that it should be "regulated" speech.
Don't believe me? There's a case before SCOTUS right now, where they're trying to decide whether a movie about a politician was a documentary or campaign advocacy.
Required-to-be-"objective" news would have to be so softball that it's pointless. You can't report what any politician does or says, because their action might be too "obviously" right or wrong, so that mere information becomes political persuasion. If president Johnson goes up to the podium, blows a baby's brains out, sucks up the blood, and grins at the reporters, nonprofit reporters can't say he did that, or their so-called "news" will be labeled "Johnson-bashing."
You think I'm being absurd, but there's that Hillary movie case. It made it to the courts, dudes. This is not a joke and I'm not making it up; it happened and it does happen all the time. In my own locality, there was a stink about whether mailing information about voting records was too PAC-like. I'm not complaining/cheering here about these decisions going the right or wrong way, but they have to be made and sometimes it's a mess. Reporters aren't going to want to get into that kind of trouble, so non-profit news will suck.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Even worse, it's state subsidized tax evasion.
If nonprofits have too much money at the end of the year, I guess they have to pay it out in bonuses and retro-active benefits to their executives, right?
You're being way too cynical there. The profit (after reinvestment) will/should be used to increase the amount of reserves to help tide over the years when there really is no profit at all. Indeed, of the non-profit orgs where I know the financials, a profitable year is rather too rare to be a big problem...
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
so how does that help?
"Newspapers. Let's make them non-profit. But I repeat myself."
If nonprofits have too much money at the end of the year, I guess they have to pay it out in bonuses and retro-active benefits to their executives, right? As long as their bottom line shows no profit, who cares what, for whom, their expenses were?
Or like Universities, they can set up a endowment for the future. The only thing non-profits can't do with their money is pay investors. (Except for bond payments, which are fixed)
Before the crash, several Universities, like Harvard, had too much money in their endowments, so the IRS asked them to spend a bit more, following their charter. i.e. Their reason to exist. They were starting to, when the bottom dropped out of the market, so I don't think any are in that situation now.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Or they could have a charter that demands any most funds be put toward expanded/improved service, which I think is more likely.
Knowledge is just opinion that you trust enough to act upon. -Orson Scott Card
You don't get gov't money or tax breaks (which politicians see as the same thing) without strings attached. I think the concern that this might be a step towards a state-controlled press is something to consider. And what problem is this supposed to solve? The fact that some newspapers are going out of business? Why does the government need to get involved in that problem at all?
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
I thought that WAS their status, which was the whole problem....
Government is preparing to prop up a fail[ed|ing] business model.
I wonder if Sen. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md. (and complete moron), understands the reason the papers are failing is that newspaper subscriptions are down because there are ... zOMFG wait for it ... better ways to get news here in the 21st century.
We don't see many people changing wagon wheels, and I haven't heard of any horse-n-buggy bailouts/tax-breaks since the automobile was made popular/affordable, and more convenient.
Let these old, outdated business die with dignity. They served a valuable purpose for many years. Time to move on here, Gov.
Does CNN management send memos to their reporters with instructions like "His [Bush's] political courage and tactical cunning ar[e] [wo]rth noting in our reporting through the day"? Memos that a former employee describes as "talking points instructing us what the themes are supposed to be, and God help you if you stray"?
If so, I promise to despise them. If not, then Fox is a different kind of organization than CNN, not a differently biased one of the same kind.
You can be biased and still be honest. You can be biased without being a party's house organ. I wish we had more bias like we get from The Economist, which wears their opinions on their sleeve while still doing real reporting.
That's why the more diverse sources of reporting there are, the better. Readers can read different reports which focus on different details and make up their own minds based on the whole. Unless of course they want to be spoon-fed a headline and two-sentence summary and sound bite of outrage, then they can watch Fox News.
Incidentally I work as a newspaper reporter, and I think this senator's idea is great. So I am clearly declaring my bias.
If diverse sources of reporting are conglomerated into fewer and fewer media sources (look at Canada as a micro-example, there are two companies controlling most of the daily newspapers across the country) then variety suffers. If this continues, as it will if corporatism dominates media through buyouts, bankruptcies, etc. then there will be very little diversity. You will have, essentially, what existed before the advent of the printing press - only the wealthy could afford to have anything recorded, so the they got to write history.
The wealthy have often controlled the press (e.g. Hearst) but in the 20th century there were a wide variety of "slants" in print because it wasn't too hard for someone to round up investors, or start a non-profit and create their own publication. Today ownership of or access to a colour press capable of doing magazines or newspapers is prohibitively expensive and the biggest problem is the business model is broken. Few people want to pay for what they read, so subscription revenue is down, and advertising revenue is drying up.
Yes, the Internet will change everything but no big media companies have found a way to make money off Internet-based publications on the same scale as their print products. And no one is going to pay to subscribe to a news website, that's been tried several times and in my opinion it will never work on a large scale.
To bring my ramblings to a close, I think this senator's idea is great because it could pave the way for independent, Internet-based publications to thrive, providing news to niche markets, and as non-profits, they could solicit donations from loyal readers. That could be enough to allow investigative journalism to thrive again, and to allow small, independent publications to grow and thrive by the quality of their work, instead of by virtue of being the biggest game in town.
Newspapers already depend on being able to mail at Second Class rates, and government has used that as a lever in the past.
During World War I, Victor Berger's "Milwaukee Leader" was forbidden to use newspaper mailing rates after criticizing the war.
Newspapers are one of the largest telemarketers. They are cut off by the national do-not-call list. They have asked several times for an exemption (and language telling the FCC to *consider* that exemption is in the law, but the FCC declined to adopt it - see 227(c)(1)(C) at http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/47/227.shtml).
As a nonprofit, they can then ignore the national do-not-call list.
THAT is the real motivation behind this.
The beauty of donations is that they are open for all to see depending on the financial reporting laws of your state/province. Plus, a donor-supported news source can choose to reject a donation from any source it wants. So even if there are biases towards donors, it's a hell of a lot easier to look through the financial reporting all non-profits must do and find that information than to look through a newspaper/magazine/TV program and try and guess which advertiser is driving the agenda.
Plus, from the documentaries and non-profit news programs I have seen, donors are a lot more forgiving if they are criticized than advertisers in the traditional business model. I could tell you horror stories... advertisers getting people fired for writing fair and balanced stories that dared to suggest people take their business elsewhere, stories spiked for fear of losing advertising, that sort of thing. It could happen with a donor-supported model, but I don't think there would be the same kind of pressure.
Why do we need newspapers? It's just another idea whose time has come and gone. Do we still have town criers?
Every few months, the paper guy knocks on my door and asks if I want to subscribe. I always tell him I get my news from the web. It's not that I no longer read. I just don't read the paper.
The legislation is aimed at local newspapers. LOCAL NEWSPAPERS! I work at one and we are laying people off left and right. We don't make any revenue off internet ads as local advertisers do not benefit from them. This has little to do with the internet and everything to do with a failing economy.
These small newspapers cover stories that are usually only pertinent to the region they are in, stories that would never see the light of day in a larger newspaper. In my town, if our paper goes under, there is NOTHING to replace it. NOTHING.
This isn't the government trying to save the Pony Express. It is trying to save a very necessary part of our society that is failing with no legitimate successor in sight.
Goddamn. You do know that AP stands for "Associated Press," right? All that content that comes out with "AP" stamped on it comes from those papers that are dying. All the AP does is de-localize it, and aggregate it. If they add national quotes, they'll take off the original reports byline, but if you SEE a byline, search the name, and you'll see where the story really came from. Better than 9 of 10 won't be from AP bureaus.
Learn a little about the business before you start opining about which parts of it have actual value, eh?
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Newspapers replaced the town crier. Newspapers are the 21st century equivalent of the town crier. Newspapers will be replaced by something else that has advantages and disadvantages.
Newspapers are largely full of things I don't care about and things that I don't understand why they even have like coverage of national sporting events. Aren't the multiple ESPNs and Fox Sports channels and websites enough? Why do newspapers have horoscopes? Why do they have comic strips that haven't been funny for 20+ years?
If newspapers want to survive they need to figure out what they do better than any other medium. Coverage of what the news channels talked about yesterday isn't one of them.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
The BBC seems to work really, really well. Maybe that's the future...
It would be a horror if the open antisemitism of the BBC is our future.
Speaking of BS...
if a news organization cannot survive in the market it doesn't deserve to exist.
Given that you were mistakenly leaving NPR out of that statement when you made it, I'm assuming what you mean is that the news organizations a market-focused society deserves are Murdoch outlets.
We don't need another NPR-style organization. News is not Sesame St. for adults.
Sesame Street for adults? Since that sounds like a cheap insult, I'll take it as a sign that you're unfamiliar with NPR. Or Sesame Street, for that matter, given that it's a pretty high-quality program.
But, yeah, back to news. Perhaps you're unaware that the market (via the listener contribution model) overwhelmingly supports NPR, and public funding provides less than 2% of their operating costs. Perhaps you're unaware that people trust NPR and other non-commercial alternatives more than other "market" media. There are even studies which indicate its listeners tend to be better informed. There are also readily observable contrasts in the educational value of the programming and particularly the editorializing... see, for example, CNBC vs just about any episode of the Planet Money podcast.
I'd say that far from "not needing another NPR," we could actually use a lot more of it.
Tweet, tweet.
Snohomish Times: http://www.snohomishtimes.com/ recently started up in the area I live, it's great. The funny thing is that the local *print* weekly, the Snohomish Tribune, has been operating for decades, but apparently never thought to put anything online. Here's their website: http://www.snoho.com/ -- Gee, guess where I'm going to get local news?
Comment of the year
Why is this post tagged Mexico?
Which is why we will be glad that the brits have to pay a "TV Tax" to keep real news stories being produced for the rest of us. Thanks!
Last I checked, radio still exists.
It definitely goes both ways on this. I can't even remember how many times I've seen shows pulling videos from the internet that a person uploaded and calling it news, or filler, or whatever. It is also not uncommon to see TV and newspapers printing and reading comments from blogs including some well researched and first hand information in them. Bloggers often blog on things they have witnessed or experienced, with what I would think is a smaller percentage of them commenting on things they have read.
I've said this elsewhere, but...
News publication should remain a for prophet business. Only the gathering editing of news is a public service. Particularly, local news gathering should be able to be done by not-for-profit corporations.
Strive to make your client happy, not necessarly give them what they ask for
Granting religions tax-exempt status is making a law respecting the establishment of religion, because it differentiates between tax liabilities, based solely upon whether the entity is a religion or not. It singles out religion as being a special class, and that is a facial violation of the establishment clause.
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
Are you still reading newpapers? On the Web? Do you prefer watching news?
Personally, I m only reading newspaper on the web (http://www.lemonde.fr http://www.liberation.fr/ http://www.lalibre.be/ http://www.lesoir.be/ and less http://www.lefigaro.fr/ http://www.letemps.ch./ Even if people describes me to be more on the right (for Belgium, translate as communist in the USA :) ), i prefer leftish newspaper. But I like to be able to read different point of view and then make an opinion about myself. Still i find the quality of the writing to be weaker than before. If you now a subject well, you see obvious errors.
Now, i still buy 2 papers every month : "le monde diplomatique" (in http://mondediplo.com/) and "foreign affairs" ( http://www.foreignaffairs.com/) both are very interessing and they are following high standard, I also read the Economist from time to time. I wouldnt want to read them on the web because each article is quite dense and asl myself to focus on it. I would like to have the same depth into classical newpaper but alas :(.
I think Democracy needs Journalism. In democracy, voters must vote for the best candidate. And how would you do without knowing? I think that both Education and Information need to be analyse in the light of how good they are to Democracy
To come back to the proposition, I think is not neccesaraly wrong, this could allow some smaller publication to exist and that will bring more diversity where before the News Conglomerate were tending to uniformity.
"Use cases are fairy tales..." I. S. 2005
I saw something about this on TV last night. They guy was crying. "Nobody reads the papers any more." I grew up in a family where the news paper a an important part of daily life. The paper was passed around everyone read it. For years I bought a paper until I found that News Reporting had changed. Instead of truth and non-biased reporting stories started have a certain slant to them or were out right lies or fabrication. So now when the Urinal & Constipation called to sell me a paper. I laugh and ask "Why should I buy your lies?" To me because change of news from fact to fiction. I see newspapers as a waste of trees.
There is a difference between journalism and writing. This line has been really blurred lately. If I want fiction I'll buy a paper back book thank you.
This was a professor of journalism that was crying about this maybe as a professor he should have been teaching to report facts no matter how boring and not to jazz it up to be more exciting with bent truths and FUD.
This guy was not only talking about tax exempt status but also free mail service to the papers. What fails to realize is no one wants his lies even if they are free! Please! don't put your shit in my mailbox.
Have you noticed how all the old fat cats are crying for money? and getting it!
Personally the papers are just like all the failing businesses these days there greed and lies have FINALLY! caught up with them and they boats are sinking. Let the bastards sink and drown in their own shit.